checked into the hospital, Hal helped Bobby slip their client out of the
room. With Julie scouting the way, they went quickly and quietly along
the hall and through the fire door at the head of the emergency stairs.
Frank’s skin remained cold to the touch, and he was still clammy with
perspiration; but the effort brought a flush to his cheeks, which made
him look less like a walking corpse.
Julie hurried to the bottom of the stairwell to see what lay beyond the
lower door. With the thump and scrape of their footsteps echoing
hollowly off the bare concrete walls, the three men went down four
flights without much difficulty. At the fourth-floor landing, however,
they had to pause to let Frank catch his breath.
“Are you always this weak when you wake up and don’t remember where
you’ve been?” Bobby asked.
Frank shook his head. His words issued in a thing wheeze: “No. -Always
frightened… tired, but not as bad… as this. I feel like…
whatever I’m doing… wherever I’m going… it’s taking a bigger and
bigger toll. I’m not… not going to survive… a lot more of this.”
As Frank was talking, Bobby noticed something peculiar about the man’s
blue cotton sweater. The pattern of the cable knit was wildly irregular
in places, as if the knitting machine had briefly gone berserk. And on
the back, near his right shoulder blade, a patch of fibers was missing;
the hole was the size of a block of four postage stamps, though with
irregular rather than straight edges. But it wasn’t just a hole. A
piece of what appeared to be khaki filled the gap, not merely sewn on
but woven tightly into the surrounding cotton yarn, as if at the garment
factory itself. Khaki of the same shade and hard finish as the pants
that Frank was wearing.
A shiver of dread pierced Bobby, although he was not sure why. His
subconscious mind seemed to understand how the patch had come to be and
what it meant, and grasped some hideous consequence not yet fulfilled,
while his conscious mind was baffled.
He saw that Hal, on the other side of Frank, had noticed the patch, too,
and was frowning.
Julie ascended the stairs while Bobby was staring in puzzlement at the
khaki swatch.
“We’re in luck,” she said.
“There’re two doors at the bottom. One leads into a hallway off the
lobby, where we’d probably run into a security man, even though they
aren’t looking for Frank any more. But the other door leads into the
parking garage, the same level our car’s on. How you doing, Frank? You
going to be okay?”
“Getting my… second wind,” he said less wheezingly than before.
“Look at this,” Bobby said, calling Julie’s attention to the khaki woven
into the blue cotton sweater.
While Julie studied the peculiar patch, Bobby let go of Frank and, on a
hunch, stooped down to examine the legs of his client’s pants. He found
a corresponding irregularity: blue cotton yarn from the sweater was
woven into the slacks. It was now one spot of the same size and shape
as that in the sweater, near a series of three smaller holes near the
cuff on the right leg however, he was sure that more accurate
measurements would confirm what he knew from a quick look-that the tot
amount of blue yarn in those three holes would just about fill the hole
in the shoulder of the sweater.
“What’s wrong?” Frank asked.
Bobby didn’t respond but took hold of the somewhat baggy leg of the
pants and pulled it taut, so he could get a better look at the three
patches. Actually,
“patches” was an inaccurate word because these abnormalities in the
fabric did not look like repairs; they were too well blended with the
material around them to be handwork.
Julie squatted beside him and said, “First, we’ve got to get Frank out
of here, back to the office.”
“Yeah, but this is real strange,” Bobby said, indicating the
irregularities in the pants.
“Strange and… important some how.”
“What’s wrong?” Frank repeated.
“Where’d you get these clothes?” Bobby asked him.
“Well… I don’t know.”
Julie pointed to the white athletic sock on Frank’s right foot and Bobby